


an open door

by tripcyclone



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Character Study, Found Family, Gen, Loneliness, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-24 10:41:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19722025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tripcyclone/pseuds/tripcyclone
Summary: Lilia never wanted children of her own, but caring for Victor gives her a glimpse into the life she chose to pass by.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [orro](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orro/gifts).



Victor couldn’t have been more than twelve when Lilia first met him, his long silver hair tied in a ponytail down his back. “He shows promise,” Yakov had told her earlier that morning, and she knew he wouldn’t say so unless he was confident Victor met her standards. She came to the rink later that day, keeping her distance, observing as Yakov sent the unsuspecting boy through a series of different elements to showcase his ability. Victor was a powerful jumper for his age, and he held his upper body in such a way that Lilia knew some third-rate teacher had previously instructed him in ballet. It was a strike against him: she would much rather teach someone fresh than train the bad habits out of an intermediate student. 

When Yakov had finished putting Victor through his paces, Lilia approached the boards and greeted Yakov the way she always did, with a brief brush of her lips against his cheek. The angle was such that her eyes were aimed at Victor as she did it, and she saw the way Victor’s eyes zeroed in on that tiny point of connection. When she gave him her full attention, he straightened his posture, full of alertness. “Vitya, this is Lilia Baranovskaya,” Yakov said. “I asked her to come in today to observe your skating.”

When she extended her hand to Victor, he quickly peeled off his glove and shook it eagerly. He showed no sign of recognition at her name, so she asked, “Do you know who I am?”

“No,” Victor said. Then, with enthusiasm: “But you must know Yakov very well!”

“He is my husband, yes.”

Victor looked between the two of them. “I didn’t know he was married,” he said, surprised. “He’s never talked about you before.”

It didn’t offend Lilia to hear it—she saw no reason for Yakov to be telling a child details of his personal life—but Yakov gave a guilty start. “What do you think I wear this for?” he said gruffly, indicating his wedding ring. “Besides, I wasn’t about to get your hopes up. Lilia only works with students who are worth her time and attention.”

Victor’s eyes widened. He looked back at Lilia with renewed curiosity. “Tell me, who’s been instructing you in ballet?” Lilia asked.

He named a woman she’d never heard of before. “She’s done you more harm than good,” Lilia said brusquely. “She’s allowed you to fall into imperfect habits and commit them to muscle memory, and now you’ll need to work twice as hard to break them and relearn the techniques properly. It will be a difficult and time-consuming process.”

She kept a careful eye on Victor’s reaction to her words. At first, his face went crestfallen, but when she said _difficult and time-consuming_ , he straightened his shoulders and lifted his chin. “I see,” he said, his childish voice unexpectedly grave. “Would you be able to teach me how to do things the right way? I want everything about my skating to be perfect.”

As responses to criticism went, it was a fairly good one. She had no patience at all for sullen, resistant students. “I can teach you the proper techniques,” she said. “Whether or not you perform them _perfectly_ is up to you.” She looked over at Yakov. “I’ll give him a month. Lessons five days a week. If I’m satisfied with his progress after that, I’ll take him on full-time.”

When she looked back at Victor, his whole body had tensed with sudden excitement. “Oh, thank you!” he exclaimed, and for a moment Lilia had the distinct impression that he wanted to leap forward and hug her. He thrust his hand out instead. “I’ll work very hard, I _promise_ ,” he said as she shook it. 

“That’s easy to say when you’re outside the studio,” she said. “We’ll see if you’re still saying it at the end of Monday’s lesson.”

She put her hand on Yakov’s forearm as she took her leave, and she noticed again the way Victor’s eyes tracked the motion, as if he found it distracting. Victor didn’t say anything else as she strode briskly toward the rink’s exit, but as soon as she rounded a corner and was out of sight, she heard his high, excited laugh and then an uncharacteristic “ _oof_ _”_ from Yakov. She paused and took a quiet step back: Victor had practically bowled Yakov over with a hug. “She wouldn’t be giving me a trial if she didn’t think I was good, right?” Victor asked eagerly. “I didn’t even know she was watching me! It means she thinks I have potential, right?”

“Don’t let it go to your head,” Yakov said tersely, but he gave Victor an awkward pat on the shoulder. “Lilia does not suffer fools gladly. You’ll need to work hard and stay focused if you want her to take you seriously.”

Victor beamed. “I will!”

...

The day after that, Lilia noticed a gap in the row of VHS tapes on the shelf next to their television. Yakov looked slightly guilty when she asked about it. “Vitya was asking questions about your career,” he said. “I let him borrow a copy of one of your performances.”

“Which one?”

“ _Sleeping Beauty._ _”_

Yakov had always been sentimental about that performance; it was the first thing he had ever seen her in. “You probably should’ve given him something shorter,” she said. “I doubt he has the patience to sit through it.”

But when Victor took his first hesitant step into her ballet studio on Monday, it was clear he _had_ watched it, because he regarded her with a level of awe and fear that had been absent in their first meeting. For the first week of lessons, he was downright docile, accepting her criticism and corrections with a level of humility that she rarely received from her older students. At the end of the week, the tape of _Sleeping Beauty_ found its way back onto the shelf near the television, but another tape vanished: _Giselle_ , she deduced eventually, walking her fingers along the top of her own career retrospective. Yakov was clearly just handing over the ones he liked best.

On Monday, Victor arrived in her studio just as docile as he had been before. He worked hard, and he was already showing enough improvement in his ingrained habits that Lilia ended the lesson feeling rather charitable toward him. As he packed up his things, she said, “I saw that Yakov has been loaning you tapes of ballet performances to watch. I believe _Giselle_ was the last one. Did you watch it?”

“Oh!” Victor said, sounding surprised. “Yes.”

“What did you think?”

Victor was quiet for a moment as he zipped his nylon bag shut. Then he hefted it over his shoulder and stood up straight. “I hated it,” he said.

It was so far from the response she’d been expecting that she was momentarily caught off guard. “Oh?” she said.

“The man lies about who he is to Giselle, and she _dies_ ,” Victor said. “I thought in the second half he’d try and save her, but she doesn’t come back to life. She’s dead _forever_.”

There was a look of indignity on his face. She hadn’t realized he was so sensitive. Presumably Yakov hadn’t either, or else he would’ve known better than to give the boy a well-known tragic romance. “It sounds like it stirred your emotions,” she said. “That’s one of the hallmarks of good art.”

She could tell he didn’t like hearing that. “The story and emotion are important parts of the work, but the technical elements are just as important,” she said. “What did you think of the dancing?”

“It was beautiful,” Victor said, almost begrudgingly. “But that makes it _worse_. When something’s beautiful, I want to watch it over and over again. But this was too sad. I’m _never_ going to watch it again.”

_“Never_ is a foolish word,” Lilia said briskly. “Especially for a child to use. The way you feel today is not the same way you’ll feel five years from now.”

She saw suppressed emotion flit across Victor’s face. After a week of agreeability, it was charmingly novel to see him so stubborn about something. “I don’t like sad things,” Victor said, with a briskness that matched her own. “When I skate, I only want it to make people happy.”

If he’d been a few years older, she might’ve countered with a speech about the banality of happiness in art, but she knew there was no point. Some things could only be understood with age and experience. “Fortunately for you, Yakov doesn’t allow his younger students to torture the audience with melodramatic programs,” Lilia said. “But you should remember this: a true artist continually challenges his old ways of thinking. He must be just as flexible in his creative mind as he is in his body.”

A faint furrow appeared on Victor’s forehead. He opened his mouth, and then closed it again without saying anything. “What?” Lilia asked. 

“I’m not an artist yet,” Victor said. “Am I?”

“You’ve dedicated yourself to practicing an art,” Lilia said. “What else would you call it?”

Victor didn’t answer. The stubbornness had faded from his expression and now he just looked thoughtful. “Whether or not you’re a _good_ artist depends on how much effort you’re willing to put in,” Lilia said. “If you continue to show the effort you put in today, you’ll be moving in the right direction.”

It was the first time she had given him a clear compliment, and she saw him light up. “Go,” she said, gesturing toward the door before he could say anything in response. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

...

While Lilia had no tolerance for students who talked back or complained during practice, she found herself liking Victor better for his display of passionate opinion. When Yakov put the tape of _Giselle_ back on the shelf, Lilia brushed his hand away from where it was headed— _Romeo and Juliet,_ did he want to make the boy cry?—and selected _Swan Lake_ instead. It had been staged with a happy ending rather than a tragic one. Victor reacted much more favorably to it, though his tendency to focus on the story rather than any of the technical elements was something he needed to work on. “Have you ever attended a ballet performance in person before?” Lilia asked him. 

“No.”

“You ought to,” she said. “Tell your parents I said to take you. They should be concerning themselves with your artistic education as well as your physical training.”

Victor’s face underwent a subtle transformation. After three weeks, she had become accustomed to his expressions: his furrowed-brow concentration as he practiced, his tightly pressed lips when he was frustrated, his beaming smile when she gave him some small bit of praise. But as she watched, his face fell a little—and then _lifted,_ almost cartoonishly, into a wide grin. “They’re a little too busy to do things like that!” he said. “But these tapes are still very educational, aren’t they?”

The effect was just disquieting enough that Lilia decided not to push the issue further. Later, as she and Yakov ate dinner at home, she asked, “What are Vitya’s parents like?”

“I’ve only met them twice,” Yakov said. “Someone else brings him to the rink every day—his aunt, I think. They’re very hands-off when it comes to his training.”

“Does he talk about them with you?”

“On occasion. They seem to travel quite frequently. He usually talks about when they’re due to arrive back.”

“He told me they would be too busy to take him to a ballet performance,” Lilia said. “He’s never been to one before. I thought his previous instructor might have done _that_ for him, at least, but no.”

There must have been something contemplative in her voice, because Yakov looked at her and guessed, correctly, “Are you thinking of taking him yourself?”

“In a few weeks, perhaps. When my schedule is lighter.”

“Will you still be working with him then?” Yakov asked. “His trial period only has another week left.”

Lilia had privately decided in Victor’s favor in the middle of week two, but she hadn’t felt the need to advertise her early decision. “He has a good disposition and work ethic,” Lilia said. “I see no reason not to continue.”

Yakov looked pleased. “So my judgment was sound this time,” he said, a little dryly. 

She reached over and gave his hand a pat. “Don’t let it go to your head,” she said. 

...

It was a month before they ended up going to a ballet performance— _Swan Lake_ , so it could be a point of comparison to the version Victor had already seen. She asked Yakov to come along too, and she had to admit she was amused by the expression of shock on Victor’s face when he saw Yakov dressed in nice clothes. “You look almost _handsome,_ _”_ Victor marveled.

“Thank goodness you approve,” Yakov said tersely, catching Lilia’s slight smile from the corner of his eye.

Victor himself was dressed in a smart little suit, a nicer one than Lilia was expecting. His parents—or aunt, or whoever was in charge of him—clearly had good taste. Victor started the evening starry-eyed, just at the sight of the theater and the well-dressed crowd around him, and that light never dimmed throughout the entire performance. She had thought he might get bored at parts, or fidget, but he watched the stage intently and with great absorption. The only time his attention was drawn away was when Lilia moved her hand slightly, touching Yakov’s forearm as she noticed a mutual acquaintance of theirs among the dancers entering the scene. Victor’s eyes moved toward the motion like a moth to a flame: he zeroed in on the point of connection between her hand and Yakov’s arm for just a little bit too long before looking away. 

When the performance was over, Victor was starry-eyed all through the drive home, talking excitedly about how wonderful everything had been—although Lilia and Yakov had agreed through silent eye contact that it had been lacking in several respects. Victor’s focus, as usual, was almost entirely on the story: he was too easily dazzled by romance and grand emotion. But when Lilia redirected his attention to other elements of the show, he talked about those too, and asked questions, and was curious and enthusiastic enough that Lilia thought, not for the first time, that it was a shame no one had cultivated his artistic education until now. Even Yakov probably should have done more, in the year he’d been coaching the boy. 

In the months after that, the three of them went to several different performances, and Victor’s critical faculties developed quickly. He started noticing variations in skill level among the dancers, and the difference between flat and dynamic staging. Every time they went, his aunt dropped him off at the start of the evening, and then at the end they drove him back to her apartment building. “Where are your parents right now?” Lilia asked one evening, as their car pulled up to the curb.

And oh, did Lilia dislike the look on his face when she asked: a visible shift from genuine enthusiasm to that strained, over-exaggerated grin he always put on when he talked about them. “Austria!” Victor said brightly. “They should be back in two weeks, if all goes well!”

They delivered Victor to his aunt’s care and headed back home. The quiet of the car always felt slightly unreal after all of Victor’s chatter, and Lilia found her thoughts growing rather loud to compensate. It wasn’t unusual for athletes to spend much of their time away from their families; it was the unfortunate reality of anyone who pursued mastery of their craft. Perhaps if Victor weren’t training, his parents would be bringing him along on all these trips they took. But a cynical part of Lilia was starting to suspect otherwise. She remembered the way Victor’s face had fallen that first time she asked about his parents, the glimmer of genuine hurt he’d covered with a hastily constructed smile. And that longing look in his eyes every time he saw her give Yakov a kiss, or an absent-minded touch on the arm—he fixated on those moments, as if the sight of affection surprised him. 

Lilia had never wanted children of her own. To have a child meant agreeing to give up part of your own life to make room for theirs, and she wasn’t willing to do it. But to have children, and then leave no room for them in your life? It was detestable behavior. 

When she and Yakov returned home, they went about their separate nighttime routines in comfortable silence. Lilia’s thoughts remained surprisingly loud in her head. There was no question that Victor had great promise: Yakov, never one to build castles in the air, was already talking about podium placement when Victor officially entered junior-level competitions next year. But greatness required focus. If some portion of Victor’s attention was always directed toward his absent parents, endlessly tracking the motion of their planes in the sky, it would take away from the focus he needed to achieve that greatness. He was a hard worker, and a genuine talent, but to be the _best_ required something more. A suitable environment to grow in, free of distractions. 

When she and Yakov settled into bed for the night, Yakov said, “You’ve been quiet.” His tone was observational; it didn’t demand an answer.

“I’ve been considering something,” she said. “Do you remember, years ago, when you thought we should take in Sergei when his family moved to Samara?”

She and Yakov had been married for so long that their communication had shortcuts: complex meaning leaped between their minds with only a look, or a phrase, or an allusion to some past event. At the mention of his former student, Yakov’s eyes widened with surprise, and she knew he had skipped rapidly down her chain of thought and arrived at her intended meaning. “I remember you saying no,” he said. “Quite vigorously. What would be different now?”

“Sergei was not a self-sufficient child,” Lilia said. “And, quite frankly, he wasn’t talented enough to be worth the imposition.”

“And Vitya would be?”

“I believe so,” she said. “You don’t?”

Yakov was quiet for longer than she expected. “I do,” he said at last. “But I had put the notion out of my mind completely, after you were so against it last time.”

It had been nearly a decade ago. Back then, Lilia still performed more than she taught; a hip injury had troubled her but not limited her, the way it did now. It had been a hard transition, losing the freedom of mobility and expression she had reveled in all her life. It had been difficult to accept that the choreography she created was no longer something she was physically capable of herself. It could only ever be realized by other artists, at a remove from her direct control. But she had made her peace with that. And Victor, more than any other student of Yakov’s, seemed the most likely to do her choreography justice. 

“Think about it,” she said, and in the silence that followed she fell asleep. 


	2. Chapter 2

Lilia had never wanted children of her own, but there had been the occasional moment in her late thirties when she questioned herself—looking at infants in their mothers’ arms and wondering if she would regret her decision when the opportunity was gone. When Victor Nikiforov moved into their apartment, she found she could truly and definitively put that fear to rest. Motherhood would not have suited Lilia _at all._

Victor wasn’t even a particularly difficult child to live with. He was well behaved and fairly undemanding: he could sit quietly for hours reading a book. But the presence of even a self-sufficient child threw the familiar balance of her life permanently askew. She and Yakov were responsible for him now, every minute of every day, and his moods and health and hardships became a permanent wildcard in what had previously been an orderly way of living. A child was a permanent tether—and she had _known_ that, going in. But knowing was very different from the actual feeling of the tether being knotted tight around her mind.

Victor, after a short adjustment period, seemed to be doing well with the change. He had been hesitant when Lilia and Yakov first suggested it, but Lilia had spoken to him plainly, with as much honesty as she could. “If you’re going to progress,” Lilia told him, “you must immerse yourself in training and preparation, even when you’re not in the studio or on the ice. It must be the air you breathe, everywhere you go. Right now, you spend part of your time with your parents, and part of your time with your aunt, but going back and forth is disruptive to your schedule. You would be better off in one place, all the time, so you can maintain a permanent routine.”

None of it was a lie, but it was also carefully phrased to avoid blaming the ones responsible for the disruption. Lilia met Victor’s parents for the first time when they were relinquishing their son to her: they had agreed to the arrangement without asking to meet her first, or look over Yakov and Lilia’s apartment, or any of the other things one might expect a parent to be concerned about. Lilia had disliked them immediately and intensely, even though they were polite enough to her and Yakov, and affectionate with Victor when he gave them each a tearful hug goodbye. Their behavior would’ve been easier to understand if they’d been outright villainous, but they weren’t. They were just...insufficient. Not enough. 

By the time Victor had grown comfortable living with them—and Yakov and Lilia had made an uneasy peace with that permanent tether around their attention—it was time to start preparing for Victor’s first season as a Junior skater. Victor was so excited that he only complained a little at the classical pieces Yakov and Lilia chose for his programs, and he threw himself into mastering the choreography with enthusiastic determination. The only bump in the road came when they started working on his costuming and styling, and Lilia had to address an issue she knew would make Victor upset. “You’ll need to cut your hair,” she told him one evening, as they finished up with dinner. 

From his reaction, you’d think she’d told him to cut off an arm. _“Why?”_ Victor cried, drawing the long silver strands back behind his shoulders, as if he expected her to reach across the table with scissors right then. 

“Because you maintain it abominably, and half of it is split ends,” she said. “Here, I’ll show you.”

She sat him down at her vanity and brushed his hair out until it was smooth and straight. Then she pulled a lock of it forward and showed him the point where the split ends started. “You see?” she said. “We’ll need to cut it off from here.”

 _“No,”_ Victor said, in a voice so high and distressed it was almost a whine. “That’s too short. I want to keep it the way it is!”

“I know you can see the difference,” Lilia said, a little testily. “From the roots to here, your hair is healthy, but the rest looks messy and frayed. Don’t you want to look your best when you compete?”

 _“No,”_ Victor repeated, crossing his arms over his chest. 

His unexpected obstinacy was on the verge of causing her temper to flare, until she looked in the vanity mirror and realized Victor’s eyes were shiny with tears. As she watched, they spilled over his eyelashes and started to streak down his cheeks, although he wasn’t making any noise at all. He sat there with his arms wrapped tightly around himself, looking beautifully miserable, and Lilia made herself take a few steadying breaths. She moved behind Victor and set her hands down on his shoulders. “Why is this making you cry?” she asked. 

For a moment he tensed under her touch, but when she didn’t move her hands away, he started to relax. The side of his mouth lifted in a sad little smile. “Mama loves my hair,” he said. “She thinks it’s beautiful this way.”

Lilia tried not to let her dislike show in her expression. Of course that was the reason—he’d spent his whole life subsisting on scraps of her love, and he couldn’t afford to lose even one. Lilia didn’t say anything for a moment, carefully considering her words. “I know her opinion is important to you,” she said. “But your mother knows what you’re trying to accomplish. That’s why she allowed you to live with us. She knows that soon, the whole world is going to be looking at you, and they’ll be expecting to see a work of art.”

She felt a faint shiver run down Victor’s back. “Vitya," she said, with as much gentleness as she could. "There is nothing beautiful about holding on to something that’s old and damaged. You cut it away, ruthlessly, so it can come back stronger.” 

Victor's eyes in the mirror glimmered at her. “I don’t know if I’m—” He gave a little hiccup. “—ruthless.”

“You are, when you're on the ice,” Lilia said. “And in my studio. You don’t shy away from challenges or go easy on yourself. This is the same thing.”

Victor lifted his hand and touched the lock of hair pulled over his shoulder. He felt the rough ends and gave a slight, almost imperceptible grimace. 

“It will grow back,” Lilia said. She gave his shoulders a gentle squeeze. “It always does.”

...

In his first season as a Junior, Victor medaled in every event he attended. His parents traveled to Slovenia to see him perform in the Junior Grand Prix Final, and his elation on the ice was palpable, his short silver braid rising and falling behind him with every jump and spin. He took silver, and when they returned to St. Petersburg, he threw himself back into practice with astonishing energy, determined to top his performance and take gold at the Junior World Championship. He was so self-motivated that Lilia was caught off-guard when, during dinner a few weeks before the competition, Victor put on his most charming expression and asked:

“If I win gold in Norway, may I get a dog?”

Yakov looked over at Lilia. She was the one who had picked out their apartment’s cream-colored walls and champagne-colored carpet. “I don’t believe in bribery as a way to encourage results,” Lilia said, which was true. “If you’re going to achieve something, you ought to do it for its own sake.”

Even at thirteen, Victor was a quick, clever thinker. He nodded, waited a beat, then said, “After we get back from Norway, may I get a dog?”

Lilia hadn’t lived with a dog in the house since she was a young girl, when her grandmother and her grandmother’s elderly poodle moved in with the family. Her grandmother had doted on that dog after Lilia’s grandfather died. “Why do you want one?” Yakov asked gruffly. 

“Because I know I would love it so much!” Victor exclaimed. “It could keep me company when you and Lilia aren’t home. And I would do everything to take care of it, you wouldn’t have to do anything at all. It would help me be more responsible.”

His cadence was charmingly rehearsed; he had clearly planned this speech ahead of time. Lilia’s first instinct, of course, was to say no—she and Yakov were only imperfectly coping with Victor’s disruptive presence in their lives, and a dog would only throw things into chaos. But Victor’s hopeful face stirred a memory in Lilia’s head: her grandmother, smiling and brushing out her poodle’s curly, finicky coat. _“He keeps me from getting too lonely,”_ she’d said, on more than one occasion. _“I take care of him, and he takes care of me.”_

And it was true, too, that Victor was a rather isolated child. He had his friends among the other skaters at the rink, but the long hours he spent at home reading were rarely interrupted by company. 

“We’ll see,” Lilia said at last. Victor’s eyebrows darted up hopefully, but he didn’t push her any further, even though she could tell he wanted to. He had learned from past experience that Lilia’s _we_ _’ll see_ was an expression of true neutrality, and any further coaxing or wheedling risked pushing it firmly into _no._

***

Victor took the podium in Norway with a bright smile on his face. It was the smile Lilia hated: wide, artificial, imperfectly covering up the hurt underneath. When an ISU official put the bronze around his neck and gave him a bouquet, Victor shook the man's hand and then turned his smile out to the crowd with a wave. They cheered enthusiastically. They didn’t know him; they wouldn’t know that they were looking at a counterfeit. 

Yakov had a Senior skater competing in the Grand Prix Final later that evening, so Lilia supervised Victor as he gave several charming, talkative interviews to reporters after the medal ceremony. Afterward, she helped him gather his things and got them a taxi back to the hotel, and when the door shut she watched that charming falseness slide off his face into a scowl. He took off his medal and shoved the tangle of ribbon listlessly into his pocket. 

“Don’t pout,” Lilia said brusquely. “It’s unbecoming.”

It was the wrong thing to say, because Victor obeyed her: he smoothed his frown into a straight line. Lilia felt a prickle of conscience at the sight of it. It was another artificial mood that he was putting on, only this time he was putting it on to please _her._ She sighed. “No, don’t listen to me,” she said. “Pout if you want. There’s no one looking.”

The edges of his mouth dropped back down. She tried to think of something else to say, something more productive. Yakov would be better suited for this conversation: he had more experience with upset students. “You did well staying positive during your interviews,” Lilia said at last. “But I would rather hear you be honest right now. Why are you so disappointed?”

Victor was only thirteen; from most thirteen year olds she would expect the answer to be, simply, _because I didn_ _’t win._ But Victor considered her answer silently for a long time, a deep line on his brow. “I did my best,” he said at last. “When I was done with my free skate, I knew it was the very best I had ever performed it. I couldn’t have done anything else to make my score higher.”

And then he sealed his lips shut, the edges settling back down into a frown. It was the exact same thing he had told his interviewers twenty minutes ago, smiling and brushing flyaway silver hairs out of his eyes. But his morose tone altered the meaning entirely. He had done his very best—and it hadn’t been enough. He had reached the farthest edge of his own ability, and it wasn’t enough to put him any higher on the podium.

It was a hard reality for any competitive athlete to face. 

The two of them were quiet for most of the ride back, and Lilia’s thoughts started to turn slightly louder, to compensate. Victor really ought to be proud of his accomplishment. A bronze at Junior Worlds was an entirely respectable conclusion to his first ISU season. She and Yakov had shepherded him through the entire year, from start to finish, and she’d seen the months of diligent, challenging effort Victor had put in. He was right that he had done the very best he could. He ought to be proud of it; his efforts ought to leave him happy. 

Lilia cleared her throat and adjusted the collar of her jacket. “I’ll tell you now," she said crisply, "I have no interest in house-training a dog."

Victor’s head shot up. The sudden light in his eyes was a welcome sight. “Oh!" he exclaimed. "You wouldn’t have to! I would do it all! I’ve been reading books about it, I know _exactly_ what to do.”

“I have no interest in keeping track of its meals or walks, either,” she said. “And I won’t tolerate it chewing up my furniture or ruining my rugs.”

“It won’t!” Victor said. “Now that it’s the off-season, I won’t have anything else to do—I’ll make training it my _absolute priority._ Lilia, I _promise._ ”

He hovered in eager suspense at her elbow, waiting for her next words. And after a lifetime of privately judging over-permissive parents, Lilia had to admit that sometimes a child’s happiness seemed worth the absolute folly of giving them what they wanted. 

“All right,” Lilia said, and was only a little surprised when Victor threw his arms around her in a rare, joyful hug.

...

Her grandmother’s elderly poodle had been a calm, friendly dog. Victor’s poodle puppy was a friendly, frantic, overwhelming whirlwind of a creature, and on several occasions the only thing that kept Lilia from ordering it out of her home immediately was the knowledge that Victor would never survive the separation. The joy Makkachin brought him was immediate and overwhelming: his bright laugh rang through the apartment all day long, as he played and tussled with her, and tried diligently to teach her to be good. He liked to carry her around from room to room, hugging her to his chest and cooing nonsense as she wriggled and licked his face. She grew quickly and promised to be a large dog, and after awhile it became almost comical: Victor walking from room to room, his arms overflowing with her, nuzzling her side and laughing. 

“I didn’t know what it was like to love something so much,” he said one evening, as he sat on the floor carefully brushing a snarl out of her fur. “I never thought about why they always talk about love being inside your heart, but now I understand. Sometimes when I look at her, I just love her _so much,_ and right here—” He pressed the flat of his hand over his chest. “—it just _burns_. It _hurts._ ”

“It’s a powerful feeling,” Lilia said. “You should let it inform the passion you display on the ice.”

Victor said, cheerfully, “Have you ever felt that way before?”

“Yes.”

“With Yakov?”

“Yes,” she said. “When we were younger.”

Victor’s hand paused in Makkachin’s fur. “Not now?”

“When you’ve loved someone for a long time, it feels different,” Lilia said. “It’s more comfortable. What you’re feeling now is the burn of infatuation.” Then, with a bit of wryness, she said, “Puppy love.”

Victor didn’t smile. He stared at her, looking troubled. “You still love Yakov, though, right?” he asked. 

“Of course,” Lilia said. “Isn’t that what I said? You’ll understand what I mean when you’re older.”

She knew Victor hated that expression, and sure enough, she saw his face go truculent. “I’ll always feel it,” he said, looking back down at Makkachin’s fur. “When I fall in love. I won’t get _comfortable_.”

And for some reason, she found his indignance rather touching. After spending so much of her life in the company of adults, she sometimes forgot about the audacious surety of youth. She, too, had once been certain that her strongly felt emotions would never fade.

Victor set Makkachin’s brush down on the carpet. Makkachin scrambled to her feet, and Victor said “Sit,” and she had just barely settled back on her hind legs when Victor launched himself forward, giving her an enthusiastic hug. “Good girl!” he said, rubbing behind her ears. Then he looked at Lilia, and she saw the indignance slide off his face, easily, like oil over water. “I think you’re right,” he said. “I think this is what I was missing.”

“Missing?”

“In my skating,” he said. “I practiced as hard as I could, and I did my very best, but I didn’t know about this.” He kissed the side of Makkachin’s head. “This is how I want people to feel when they watch me skate.” He put his hand over his heart again. _“This_ feeling.”

And something about the way he said it—the earnestness of his expression, the fervor of his tone—caused a faint, echoing pang in her own heart. Love was so simple, so elemental, when you were young. 

“All right,” she allowed. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

...

Victor’s second season as a Junior skater hit an unexpected speed bump in the form of a growth spurt. Fortunately it happened during the early summer, when there was still time to compensate, but it interrupted the steady progress he was making and negatively influenced his moods. When the three of them went to his first Junior GPF event, Lilia and Yakov were privately prepared for him not to place, and they sighed with real relief when he took bronze. 

But a new stormcloud appeared on the horizon during that same event. Victor had made friends with one of the other skaters, a thin slip of a boy from Croatia, and the two of them spent a lot of time sitting together in the stands, chatting in English and laughing. Lilia thought nothing of it, but Yakov watched it all happen grimly. “I can’t stand this age,” he said in a low voice. “Growth spurts, moodiness, heartbreak. He’s going to be impossible to live with when we get back, I’m warning you.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” Lilia asked. 

“He’s fallen for this boy,” Yakov said, gruffly waving his hand. “I’ve seen it happen a hundred times. It never ends well.”

Lilia observed the two boys for a moment, and was startled to find he was right. Victor was blushing, and playing with the end of his silver braid, and leaning in excitedly so his head was close to the other boy's as they spoke. “Yes, I see,” she said. “I’m surprised I missed it.”

“I’ve been dreading it,” Yakov said. “I’ve been working with teenagers for too long.”

“Should we go over there and separate them?”

“Only if you want him to be heartbroken _and_ angry when we get home,” Yakov said.

When Victor and the other boy got up a few minutes later, their hands surreptitiously linked together, Lilia was at a loss for what to do. If the other boy had been older, she would’ve stopped them immediately: Victor had no natural immunity against the manipulative power of flattery and affection. But they looked to be about the same age. “Well?” she said to Yakov, deferring to his expertise. 

_“Vitya!”_ Yakov bellowed, and she saw Victor startle and drop the other boy’s hand. He turned around to look at them, his face bright red. “We leave in twenty minutes! Meet us in the lobby!”

Victor’s relief was visible. “All right!” he called back charmingly, and when he and the other boy were nearly out of the sight Lilia saw their hands link together again. 

Lilia looked at Yakov. _“That_ is how you’re addressing this?” she said, her voice stiff with disbelief. 

Yakov shrugged wearily. “There’s only so much they can get up to in twenty minutes." 

...

Yakov was not an especially romantic man, so it was peculiar to discover he was so knowledgeable about the doomed timeline of young love. “If we’re lucky, his good mood will last until after the next qualifier,” Yakov said, as Victor drifted around their apartment in a dreamy haze.

“And if we’re unlucky?”

“It’ll distract him, tank his performance, and keep him out of the Final.”

They were lucky. They did their utmost to keep Victor busy, and Victor worked just as hard as usual during practice, and when the second qualifier was over Victor had a strong silver to his name. The bottom didn’t drop out of the situation until a week after they arrived home, when Victor went online to eagerly refresh the news regarding the last Junior GPF qualifier being held that evening. 

He came to dinner in doldrums. “What’s wrong?” Yakov asked. 

“My friend Marko didn’t make the Final,” Victor said. “I thought—he’s so good, I thought he would make it without any problem. But he didn’t even make the podium.”

“These things happen,” Lilia said, not unsympathetically. “He’ll have another chance at Worlds, won’t he?”

“That’s in _February,_ _”_ Victor said, with a tinge of despair. 

It was the turning point Yakov had foreseen. Victor was listless for days after that, and for the first time since Lilia met him, he stopped trying as hard during their practice sessions. None of her brisk corrections seemed to penetrate his fog. “You’re brittle,” she snapped at him. “Your body should be supple like leather, not stiff like ceramic.”

She might as well have been speaking Greek. He wasn’t even listening. He continued moving awkwardly across the studio floor, and only stopped when she turned off the music player and stood there with her arms crossed severely over her chest. He looked at her dully. “Tell me why you’re wasting my time and sabotaging your own efforts,” she snapped. 

Victor blinked at her. Then, with unconscious theatricality, he collapsed right where he was standing into a heap on the ground, his hands covering his face with a muted sniffle. 

Lilia was master enough of herself that she didn’t laugh at the sight of this tragicomic display, although she wanted to. “Vitya,” she said, as neutrally as she could. “Tell me what’s the matter.”

He sniffled again. She came over and sat down on the floor next to him, feeling a faint, protesting twinge in her hip. When Victor lifted his head out of his hands, she saw that he was genuinely crying, slippery tears falling down his cheeks. “I’m sad,” he said. 

“I can see that,” Lilia said. “Why are you sad?”

And so he explained the situation to her in a halting, tearful voice: how desperately he’d fallen in love with Marko, the promises they made to stay in touch until they met again at the Junior Grand Prix Final. But when Marko hadn’t qualified, he stopped texting Victor, and wouldn’t answer the phone when Victor called. “He’s probably disappointed in himself,” Lilia said. “You’re still competitors, after all. He might well be jealous of your success.”

It didn’t seem to make Victor feel any better. He wiped at his eyes and said, “Did you ever love anyone before Yakov?”

“Yes.”

“So you _know_ ,” Victor said, giving her a tearfully intent look. “You know what it feels like. You know how much it _hurts_.”

She had, once upon a time, gone through her own melodramatic torments over love. But those feelings had faded with age. When she tried to dredge them up now, they didn’t feel like much of anything at all. “Yes, I suppose I do,” she said. 

“When I started dancing today, it hurt so much that I felt like I was going to turn inside out,” Victor said. “I don’t know how to dance inside out. I don’t know how to do _anything_ when I feel like this.”

Lilia nodded. “Your first heartbreak will always hurt the most,” she said. “Your heart has not yet built up a callus.”

Victor glanced up at her, faintly outraged. “I don’t want my heart to be callused!”

“I know it doesn’t sound poetic,” Lilia said, “but you know full well that you can’t dance or skate without calluses to protect you. They’re not bad things.”

“They’re not _beautiful_ things,” Victor said.

Now she did laugh. “You’d rather have beautiful feet than be able to dance and skate?" she asked. "You should’ve said something sooner.”

 _“No,”_ Victor said, but there was a begrudging amusement in his tone. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Isn’t it?” She reached over and gave his chest a firm tap with two fingers. “Love isn’t the heart,” she said. “The heart is just what helps you do it. Love is the choreography. It takes work—and effort—for it to be beautiful.” 

He looked at her for a long moment with those shining, tearful eyes. “And if the other person won’t work with you,” he said, “you can’t perform it at all.”

“No, you can’t,” she said. “Unfortunately.”

Victor blinked several times, shaking free the tears that had beaded on his eyelashes. “I hate love,” he said. 

And he sounded so much like Yakov, gruffly bemoaning Victor’s oncoming heartbreak, that Lilia couldn’t suppress a smile. “You’ll have to throw out all those novels of yours now,” she said. “All those romances and happy endings.”

“Now I know why people like sad things,” Victor sniffed. “Because the happy ones are a lie.”

But there was a hint of humor in his voice as he said it, and when Lilia stood up from the floor and offered him her hand, he took it and stood up too. “Perhaps you’ll give _Giselle_ another try now,” she said. 

“I will!” Victor said. “I’m glad she didn’t come back to life at the end. That lying nobleman didn’t deserve her.”

“If you’re serious about watching it, then I’ll watch it with you,” she said. “Perhaps I can get you to pay attention to some of the technical elements this time.”

The look of surprise on Victor’s face likely meant that he hadn’t been serious, but the suggestion seemed to perk him up a little. He wiped quickly at his red, tear-streaked face. “All right,” he said. 

...

They watched it after dinner that night, sitting on the couch in front of the television. She allowed Victor to put a sheet down first so Makkachin could lie on the couch between them, and the not-quite-a-puppy-anymore slept with her head in Victor’s lap, snuffling occasionally as Victor stroked the top of her head. 

It had been over two years since the first time Victor watched it, and his critical faculties had developed to the point where he started picking things up immediately. “Is the man playing Albrecht...not very good?” he asked.

Lilia laughed. “He injured himself the day before the performance,” she said. “He insisted he could still play the part, but he had to simplify and abbreviate many of his movements, as you can see. I was furious with him.”

Victor leaned in a little, as if examining Lilia’s face on the screen for signs of her fury. “But _you_ _’re_ very good,” he said. 

She couldn’t tell if he was being sincere or trying to flatter her. “Yes, I was,” she said anyway, because it was true. Playing Giselle had been the pinnacle of her young career. She had reached other heights, later, but this one would always be special to her. It was the role she had been hungriest for when she first started dancing. 

They watched as Giselle and Albrecht played the game of love, and as Albrecht revealed his betrayal, and as Giselle danced herself wildly to death. Victor watched with absorption as Lilia fell to the stage and lay there, motionless. The dancer playing Albrecht picked up her limp hand and clutched it to his cheek, holding it there for a long moment before letting it fall lifelessly to the boards. 

“Do you miss it?” Victor asked suddenly. 

“Yes,” she said. Perhaps she should have added some softening words to it, because Victor’s head turned quickly to look her. There was a pained, earnestly worried expression on his face. But it was the truth, wasn’t it? She did miss it. It had taken her a long time to build up the callus on her soul that allowed her to move forward without sadness or regret. “I think most dancers miss performing, once their bodies give out,” she said. “Most skaters, too. But it’s just the reality of life.”

She expected Victor to turn back and look at the television again, but he didn’t. He kept looking at her with that same worried expression. “There’s no need for that,” she said. “Life isn’t over once you can’t perform anymore. You try new things. You share your wisdom with others.” She laid her hand gently on Makkachin’s back. “You let children and dogs into your home to ruin your antique furniture.”

Victor’s look of worry shifted immediately to guilt. “It’s not _ruined,_ ” he protested weakly, stroking the sheet over the couch cushions. “Yakov said he couldn’t even _see_ the stain after I cleaned it.”

“Mmm,” Lilia said, with just enough wryness to let Victor off the hook. He turned back toward the television, giving Makkachin a scolding little scratch on the head. 

Lilia had never wanted children of her own. Her passion for dance had been too deep, too fervent: she would have chafed underneath the tether of a child’s needs. But as she and Victor both stroked a sleeping Makkachin’s fur, she found herself glad that she'd taken this small taste of what it was like. 

A closed door didn’t have to be a tragedy. There were any number of open doors waiting for her, ready for her to walk inside. 


End file.
